


Brown Penny

by whosays_penultimate



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #ItsStillBeautiful, Gen, POV Hannibal, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, alliterations like whoa, time what is time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:11:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7757380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whosays_penultimate/pseuds/whosays_penultimate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Will’s dramatic gesture of ‘come what may’, Hannibal plays his own game of ‘flip the coin’. Of course he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brown Penny

Hannibal flipped.

The coin flew into the air, and did a series of somersaults. Time slowed.

Hannibal had noticed it since he was a little boy: he could slow time. Not reverse it, _not yet._ Borrow it, perhaps. Allow others to borrow it, too, magnanimously, with the sweet interest of their anticipatory fear for when it would come due. Alana, Bedelia – promises in waiting. One’s work was never done.

And now, barely out of the Atlantic who still reached slimy tendrils toward him, in this space of borrowed time for himself, he slowed it to a near-stillness, coin up in the air, as he restlessly roamed the vast spaces of his memory palace – for solace, for guidance.

He was shivering, his stomach wound stubbornly bleeding. It would need attention, but _not yet_ – another thing Hannibal could do was slow his metabolism to a state of near-comatose state until he, or someone else, could safely patch up any tattered pieces. Any faults in the mechanism which kept blood coursing, breath flowing, the grunts and poetry of life. Hannibal never dwelt too long on such inconveniences, as long as they could be corrected.

He did not dwell on them now.

But he was worried about his continued existence, about unexpected peril and the dark magic of vulnerability and the source of his fear and uncertainty lay close by, unconscious but warmly alive, the shuddering rise and fall of his chest a threat and a promise to Hannibal.

Will had accepted him, and his own nature, with an enthusiasm that would haunt Hannibal’s dreams in days to come – _but were there any days to come_?

And then, Will – in true Will-fashion had thrown them both down from the high of his own making, down to the bottom of the tumultuous ocean, denying Hannibal and himself in the same grand gesture. Hannibal was reminded of the story of the man who came unexpectedly upon a treasure, and then took it upon himself to wander through the desert as a beggar for seven long years, to draw away bad luck, only to return afterwards to enjoy his riches for the rest of his life. If repayment for his unsought for happiness was what fate sought, then Hannibal considered the debt repaid in spades. But he doubted this reasoning was behind Will’s murder-suicide attempt.

Will was a tortured soul. His delight and fascination with Hannibal and Hannibal's cruelly beautiful world was inevitably followed by periods of self-flaying. Like a lustful but repentant monk, he tortured his flesh, and took more pleasure still from the torture.

And Hannibal bore the brunt of the mad oscillation of Will’s moods. He made Hannibal feel understood and cherished, and brought him low with the force of his subsequent rejection.

Will wasn’t to be trusted. _Not yet?_

Why was Hannibal still compelled into compassion for this contrary creature?

Hannibal crawled towards Will and gathered him close into his arms. He sniffed Will’s curls, wet and salty, eyes closed the better to savour it, the curious mixture of  Will’s familiar fragrance and the smell of blood and ocean.

I am looped in the loops of his hair.

Inaccurate.

He had told Chiyoh the most stable elements of the periodic table were between silver and iron, although that wasn’t strictly accurate, and only marginally meaningful. Chiyoh had her own demons, as did they all.

But himself and Will, in their distinct identity, seemed to carry an army of demons forever in their trail, and their querulous instability took the world by storm. He could see Will’s mind now, Will the ever-reluctantly righteous: Perhaps, it was fitting that they should leave it, leave the tempting and torturous world behind – go, go and sin no more.

But Hannibal did not _want to leave._ There were places to go, things to do, people to eat, music to listen to, conversations to be had in low voices on quiet evenings, Will.

Hannibal did not want to leave this mortal plane, with all its beauty and horror, not for the darkness on the other side, _not yet_. And the beauty and horror of it all must forever contain Will. It wasn’t merely that the world was better with Will in it – it was that the colours were dimmer. Hannibal appreciated radiance – dullness would not do.  

But perhaps it was indeed time, that Will had left. It was certainly what Hannibal’s survival instincts were telling him, with every fibre of their persuasive efforts.

And _yet_.

He could hear the waves, beating steadily like the heart of a giant monster lurking in wait.

Will’s own heart beat light and irregular against his own – and never was a song more discordant yet more profoundly comforting to Hannibal's senses. Beat – beatbeat – beat – don’t ever stop -

If the coin had fallen sometime, in the meantime, ahead of time, Hannibal did not hear it.

For a split second, he felt sad – absurdly human, devoid of his powers, and cold.

But only for a split second.

Will stirred in his arms.

It swept over him – the love, the need, devoid of any intellectual considerations, and he was violently pulled back, like a ghost to its resting place, like a vampire nailed to his coffin, from his memory palace into the here and now. The coin lay discarded on the shore, the grinning face of death pointing upwards, sealing Will’s fate, but Hannibal had forgotten about it, his hands hovering over Will, to care, to soothe, both aching and comforted when Will reached out for him blindly, his movements sloppy but urgent.

Time, released, stuttered onwards, sweeping the world, and Hannibal and Will too, towards the inevitable end, _but not just yet._

Forever hovering between the two opposite beats of the metronome – death by Hannibal or love by Hannibal, the pendulum of Will’s fate now swung firmly in Will’s favour.

Hannibal’s heart steeled with new resolve: They would both live, live to deal damage and be damaged in turn, wielding their strange powers over themselves and over the world (and oh, woe the world that wronged them!), and they would be fantastic and fearsome, and the whole thing would be fraught with pain and love, and one _cannot begin it too soon_.

**Author's Note:**

> Season Four, are we there yet?   
> ...  
> NO RUSH.


End file.
